Knowing Owen: Merry and Satirical Epitaphs on a Butler of Christ Church, Oxford

Summary

IN the early seventeenth century, the scholars of Christ Church College at Oxford University experienced a series of devastating losses: the much-beloved Prince Henry (1612), then Queen Anne (1619), King James I (1625), the firstborn child of King Charles I (1629), the Christ Church College butler, Owen (c. 1630s), and many other individuals both famous and local died. In many instances, the bereaved scholars marked these losses with one or several epitaphs, and these poetical reminiscences could take one of several forms. Joshua Scodel notes the early epitaphic contrasts between “small” and “great,” both in terms of literary genres and societal divisions, and there were many other epitaphic subgenres as well. The compiler of two elaborate manuscripts called some of the potentially “great” verses—particularly those describing deceased nobility—“Epitaphs: Laudatory,” and separated out a second selection of poems under the label, “Epitaphs: Merry and Satirical.” Texts in the former group might often be confused with elegies (also often “great” or laudatory), the form's affiliation with tombstones often afforded them comparative brevity. Although the historical, classical epitaph might, as Ian McFarlane suggests, convey a “morbid humour,” many merry, satirical, or otherwise “light” epitaphs might not have been welcome within the gravity of a church or even a graveyard. While authorial introspection, such as reflection on the poet's own feelings of loss, is common in classical and Renaissance epitaphs, most merry and satirical epitaphs elevate their authors’ wittiness far above actual commemoration of their subjects’ lives or virtues. We know very little about the “one Whose Name Was Moore,” for instance; his epitaph reads (in its entirety): “Here lies Moore, and no moore but Hee; / Moore, and no moore: how can that bee.” Moore's gender can be inferred from the pronoun in the first line, but only his surname and its punning opposition to his mortal state were necessary for the amusement of the witty author and appreciative compilers. Many other merry and satirical epitaphs likewise prioritize jests and puns over specific commemorative statements. Some rare few merry epitaphs, however, celebrate specific, named individuals, whose commemorative verses describe essential roles their subjects held within local communities, or these same subjects’ dominant or most memorable character traits.